


A Beautiful Journey of Suffering -Three- Incarceration

by TheClassicalLolita



Series: A Beautiful Journey of Suffering [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: A Beautiful Journey of Suffering, Age of Ultron, Avengers - Freeform, F/M, Kurt Wagner - Freeform, Nightcrawler - Freeform, Scarlet Witch - Freeform, Wanda Maximoff - Freeform, X-men - Freeform, pietro maximoff - Freeform, pietro x oc, quicksilver - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 20:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4363877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheClassicalLolita/pseuds/TheClassicalLolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality and nightmare blur together in Iskra's mind when she is held against her will. Can Pietro and Wanda rescue her in time or will her consciousness turn to mush counting the days since she's seen the sun? Things are changing faster than Iskra can cope with and it takes all she has not to dissolve entirely. </p><p>**This is a work in progress and mostly unedited so please forgive any grammatical errors. I appreciate all comments, compliments and criticisms. I apologize if characters seem OOC or if historical/geographical references are incorrect. Thank you for reading!**</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Journey of Suffering -Three- Incarceration

Gentle hands cradled new life, trembling uncontrollably. This was all so new. Something unknown but so very beautiful. Tiny fingers grasped her finger and Iskra choked, tears rolling from her eyes as she looked down at her daughter and smiled. Light hair and even lighter eyes looked back up at her, cooing.

“Quite a job we did, eh dragӑ mea?” Pietro smirked and brushed the wetness from her cheeks with his thumb. “She’s beautiful…”

She laid her head against his hard chest and breathed deeply, revelling in his smell mingling with the sweat and flowers in the air. And the blood. 

So much blood.

It trickled from between her legs, pooling on the mattress beneath her and running over the sides. Drip drip dripping to the floor. Where did all this blood come from?

Then, the child was gone. In its place, more blood.

“Pietro?” her voice wavered, fear driving the pitch higher. She let her hands fall to her lap, fingers slipping from the viscera between them. Pain coursed through her, starting in her core and spreading out and down her limbs. 

A scream bubbled up, startling her to wake from the nightmare. 

“Pietro!” Iskra cried out again, straining against the thick leather restraints which held her to the table. Spine arching and bones cracking, she screamed again and again until her throat felt raw and her mouth tasted like pennies.

“You very well done?” a voice asked, but there was no one else in the room. 

Iskra shrieked, lashing out as pure energy. But the lightning fizzled out weakly, unable to strike anything in the room. She craned her neck to look around her. Everything was made of hard plastic, leather or rubber. Even the horrid bed to which she was strapped. 

“Fuck you!” she coughed, red tinted spittle dribbling down her chin. “He’ll come for me and when he does, I’ll tear your spines from your bodies and make you eat them. I don’t need my mutation to make you suffer.”

The voice laughed. An awful sound that bounced off the rubber walls and came echoing back to her ears over and over again. “Oh Iskra. He’s not coming for you,” it told her, mockingly. “It’s been six days already and he’s not even looking. No. Quicksilver is likely off fucking that little witch twin of his. Glad to be rid of you, I'd say."

Bile rose in Iskra’s throat and she swallowed hard, committed to not vomit on herself since she could barely turn her head. “Fuck you,” she said again, more weakly this time. 

“You’ll break sooner or later,” the voice chuckled. 

The lock turned in the door on the other side of the room and Iskra fought to look up. A figure draped in rubber sheets stepped in. It approached her without fear or hesitation and plunged a long hypodermic needle into her arm. She gasped, bucking her body to try to get away. But the motion only made the injection burn more so she went limp, sending tiny sparks out to strike the only metal in the room.

“Say goodnight, electric cunt,” the cloaked figure growled and tore the needle from her flesh, flipping the light switch on it’s way out and sending the room into darkness. 

Iskra stared at the ghost of images in the void for several moments before the drugs began to take effect and her muscles spasmed, forcing her body into violent seizures. 

Voices swirled in the dark, distorted and garbled as if underwater. She tried to cling to them to keep herself conscious but they had nothing good to say and Iskra was soon praying for the inevitable nightmare fueled sleep which had become her existence. 

"We were afraid of you," her mother whispered. The words were clear, as if she were standing beside her and whispering in Iskra's ear. 

"I gave you life and you gave me death." It was Dimitri now, voice harsh and unforgiving.

"You were a burden." Pietro's voice sent her over the edge into oblivion. Iskra gave in to the convulsions, bashing the back of her skull against the plastic gurney relentlessly until the voices ceased. 

The water lapped at her arms and legs like a hungry wolf, engulfing her, swallowing her up. In the beginning, she was floating on the surface, staring up at the night sky. But slowly, it consumed her as though she were falling into black smoke. The starry pinpricks of light disappeared, eaten up whole as she sunk farther down. 

But strangely, there was no suffocating struggle. No drowning. 

There was only silence. 

Then her back struck the sandy ocean floor and Iskra saw her hands, suspended before her, reaching for the surface weakly. So she turned away, looking instead past the softly waving seaweeds. Towards a glowing green light. It blanketed everything, casting the underwater world in an ethereal aura.  
Iskra watched as a fish swam by. Undulating beacons of bioluminescence pulsed through it’s body, illuminating it’s organs. She reached towards it but her hand slipped right through, as though it weren’t even there. 

“What’s this?” she asked no one in particular. Water rushed into her mouth and filled her nose but she didn’t choke. The fish swam away, leaving her as she was and had been in Pripyat. As she was in all her life.

Alone.

“The asset is not responding to treatment, sir,” a husky man was speaking while he prodded Iskra in her side, trying to elicit some kind of reaction. She stirred, opening her heavy eyes slightly to look around the room. Two figures, both in rubber suits. “All she does is sleep.”

“She is responding,” the second man replied. He lingered by the door, one hand on the knob as if he were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Haven’t you seen the neural activity output? When she’s sleeping, the activity is off the charts.”

“Well she’s awake now,” The figure by Iskra’s bedside made eye contact and tightened the straps on her wrists. She winced against the bite of leather as it pinched her. “Pleasant dreams, little one?”

“Choke on a dick,” Iskra wheezed.

A hand made hard contact with her cheek, bringing blood to the surface. But he’d gotten close enough to reveal the treasure in his right front pocket. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Iskra needed.

Her hands balled into fists, charging what little electrical current she could muster in her weakened state. It branched out, crawling over the rubber suit like millions of pitch black spiders until it found it’s target. The change he’d forgotten to remove before entering the room. 

Iskra opened her palm, stretching her fingers skyward and the coins shot into the man’s thigh. He cried out in pain but she didn’t stop. Now that she had something conductive to amplify her energy, the water in his body boiled. Frenzied molecules rubbing together, creating heat that blistered his skin beneath his protective clothing. 

All that she could see through the suit was his eyes and she didn’t call off the onslaught until the whites had turned red and tears of blood hit the floor. He coughed once, spraying the inside of his face plate with gore and fell to the floor.

The man on the other side of the room made a quick motion to leave, but several more men rushed in. They were speaking to one another, asking how it was possible that she could have attacked their colleague with bound hands and neutered powers but Iskra couldn’t hear them over the laughter that spilled from her in wave after wave of uncontrollable noise. 

Someone stuck her arm with another needle and she only laughed harder. “I’ll kill each and every one of you,” she smiled, frantic tears forming in her eyes. “I won’t rest until you’re all dead!”

“Put her out, put her out!” Someone was yelling nearby. Another needle bit her and her arm cramped, sending pain down the limb and into her hand. Darkness swam at the edges of her vision. She knew she couldn’t last much longer.

“It won’t be long now. Clearly the rage has already taken hold. All we must do now is wait, and tend to the seeds of doubt we’ve already planted…”

***

Pietro paced, but not in the way that most people paced. He’d worn the carpet down to foam and the foam down to hardwood. And that was within the first day since Iska had been taken. 

He replayed the moment in his mind, again and again. It had all happened so quickly for everyone else involved, but he’d watched the events unfold at a snails pace. He’d had an upper hand and Wanda was safe, locked in her bedroom. Iskra was holding her own and most of the intruders lay dead or dying on the floor. 

But when the man had launched through the window, Pietro froze. He couldn’t react quickly enough to save her. He’d betrayed his namesake. 

He’d betrayed his love.

And once she was gone, he’d only stood motionless, staring at the space she’d once occupied. If not for Wanda, he’d have let them take him too and destroyed any chances he stood of getting her back. 

And it was Wanda as well, who packed up their important belongings and drug her brother to a new apartment. She hung pictures on the walls and cooked dinner, most of which he refused. But now and again, she could convince him to eat if for no other reason than to keep his strength up for the rescue mission. 

Pietro was wasting away from the inside out though and they both knew it. 

“We’re going to get her back, Pietro,” she told him, watching him motionless for once, staring out the window at the pouring rain. “We just have to figure out how to get in.”

“They’re hurting her. I can feel it,” he whispered in reply, placing a hand against the cold glass. Lightning struck in the distance and he wondered if she was giving them a run for their money. He hoped so. “I should have done things differently. I should have been better… for her. Not argued. I have to make things right.”

Wanda shook her head then rested it against her brother’s shoulder. He was trembling. 

“She loves you,” she sighed, deeply regretting the way she’d introduced herself to Iskra. “But you have to stay strong. Try to get some sleep. When day breaks, we’ll try again but this time, we may have a way in.”

Pietro brushed away his sister’s touch, doubting whatever she had planned. When they’d cased the HYDRA base, they couldn’t get past the fifth sub level where Iskra was being held. The doors were reinforced steel and nothing, not even Wanda, could tear them down. He’d sat outside the door, screaming for Iskra for hours, hoping against all hope that she could hear his voice. And when his throat hurt too much to speak anymore, he threw his body against the cold metal until Wanda tore him away. 

He slipped into his new bed, wishing the sheets at least smelled of Iskra. But she’d never laid upon them so no scent of her clung anywhere in the apartment. Pietro rested his head on his pillow and sighed, staring up at the stark white ceiling above him and wishing for a miracle. When he finally drifted off to sleep, his dreams were filled with a million possibilities. 

Anxiety coursed through his veins and he recited the words in his mind a million times over. Running his hands through his silver hair, he checked his reflection one last time. Not a hair out of place, but he had to look casual or she’d suspect something. 

When he returned to her side, she was sitting at a small table, alone on the balcony. The moonlight kissed her skin, giving it a beautifully eerie glow. She didn’t turn when she heard him approach, just patted the space beside her. 

“Dragӑ mea, I’ve been thinking…” he began, stumbling over the words he’d rehearsed so many times. 

Her hand found his, giving it a tight squeeze. She scooted closer to him and kissed his cheek. “Yes?”

“I always said we should stick together but losing you for a week… not knowing how to save you… it made me realize that I can’t imagine my life without you,” his accent grew thick, making it obvious how nervous he was. He only hoped the night obscured the blush on his cheeks. He fumbled in his pocket, fingers grasping a small box. 

Turning to face her, he slid from the bench and dropped to one knee. Her pale eyes widened, glancing from his to the object in his hands. She bit her lip, waiting.

“Fuck it, Iskra. I had this long speech planned but I can’t. I just want to tell you… if you accept this… this thing… I swear on my life that for as long as I live, you will never have to feel alone again,” he opened the tiny box, revealing a small ring. “Will you marry me?”

 

***

Iskra sat up abruptly and her stomach swam, warning her to lay down again. But she disregarded it. She could sit up. And that, in and of itself, was a miracle. Regardless of whether or not she was going to vomit. So many days, or maybe even weeks… she’d spent strapped down. And now, she wasn’t strapped to anything. 

Surveying her surroundings, Iskra hoped for something other than the white plastic jail cell. They had moved her, but her new location wasn’t much more accommodating than where she had been.

There was a cot, with sheets and a burlap looking blanket as well as a toilet and a chair. So why was she laying on the floor? They probably hadn’t bothered to tuck her in when they relocated her. 

She tried standing and found her legs to be painfully weak. The muscles were atrophied and sore but after a few steps, some of the stiffness faded. Iskra paced from one side of the cell to the other, pausing to pound at the door a few times. 

“Hello?” she called, not sure what to expect. “I’m alive in here! Hello? I’m hungry!”

But no one came. 

So she sat down, burying her face in her hands and trying to count back and number the days she’d been imprisoned. But Iskra found that time was not quite as tangible as it used to be. Everything sort of blurred together. Even the nightmares. They may as well have been real.

And Pietro had never come for her. 

It didn’t matter if she’d been gone a day or a month. He hadn’t come to her. 

Iskra’s chest hurt. She was going to die here like a rejected lab rat but the pain that realization brought was nothing compared to the abandonment. 

Had he ever even tried at all? 

A loud crack echoed through the space and Iskra smelled smoke. She looked up from her palms expecting to see a HYDRA soldier with a cattle prod in hand, but something entirely different looked down at her. 

“Hallo!” It said, grinning from ear to ear from behind yellow eyes. A long pointed tail whipped from side to side impatiently, but what stood out most was its blue skin. It raised a three fingered hand and waved it. “There’s not much time, my name is Kurt, I’m a friend, you have to come with me.”

It was in no way human yet it spoke with a German accent. It took a step towards Iskra and she stood up, toppling the chair over behind her.

“Get the hell away from me!” Her body twitched involuntarily and an arc of lightning shot from her fingers. But the demonic looking figure before her was gone in a flash, reappearing several feet away. 

“Okay okay, I get it. You don’t trust me. I mean, I am blue,” the thing called Kurt was holding its hand up in defense, trying desperately to show her that he meant no harm. “This won’t be easy. I’ll go get Quicksilver.”

And just like that, he was gone in a puff of smoke. 

Iskra’s heart was pounding in her chest, threatening to jump full from her ribs and make its own escape. She dropped to her knees, trying to gather herself but failing. Her visitors had strictly worn rubber suits. Maybe they were blue under all that? But she somehow doubted it. So what was this creature and why did he know Pietro’s code name? 

Her head was spinning, so she laid back against the cold cement floor. Maybe it had all been a hallucination? Yes, that was a reasonable explanation. Especially after the all the drugs they’d pumped her full of to keep her calm. 

Just as Iskra had gotten her breathing back to a somewhat normal pace, the same booming noise cut through the room. This time, she didn’t sit up. 

It was, after all, a hallucination. A demon sent from her own mind to torture her. 

But a figure was kneeling beside her and she turned as it touched her arm. Pietro.

“Dragӑ mea…” he choked, long fingers grazing her hand as though she were a doll. Tears were brimming in his pale blue eyes. “Come with me and Kurt. We take you away.” 

“You’re accent is thick. Are you upset?” Iskra asked, deadpan. So her hallucination had brought another hallucination. It was probably a mistake, but why not give in? It might ease the pain in her heart a little. So she pushed herself up and wrapped her arms around his neck, breathing in his heady smell of sweat and detergent. “Where the fuck have you been? Fucking asshole. Why couldn’t I have hallucinated you sooner?”

Pietro’s body lurched beneath her embrace. He was crying. Sobbing, in fact. “No hallucination, Iskra. This is real. You come with us. Now.”

Wetness soaked her shirt and she pulled away, finally toying with the idea that maybe this wasn’t fantasy. She touched his cheek, wiping the tears away. “Pietro?” she breathed. “Is that really you?”

He just nodded and held his hand out, reaching toward Kurt. The blue skinned thing took it and in a blink, they were gone.

***

Wanda leaned against the cool brick and tilted her head back, looking up at the night sky. Things weren’t going as planned. She hadn’t counted on Iskra refusing to trust Kurt but unlike the twins, Iskra hadn’t had much experience with other mutants. And after days of what must have been torture, seeing a blue man magically appear in her cell was probably rather startling. 

So when Kurt had come back for Pietro, Wanda started to get worried. HYDRA had surveillance all over the place. It was a miracle that they were able to even get inside without Kurt’s teleportation but it was just a matter of time before they were detected. He wasn’t supposed to reason with her. Just touch her, and teleport back out. 

Which was why Wanda breathed such a heavy sigh of relief when the three of them reappeared a few feet from her. Kurt sagged with the exertion of having moved three people through an alternate dimension. He steadied himself on the wall, panting.

“Good to see you, let’s fucking go,” she threw up a shield of red energy and waved her hands, trying to get everyone else in motion. 

But something had changed in Iskra. Her eyes were wide and empty, looking around frantically but seeming not to truly see anything. Her skin was dry and patchy and her hair a mess. And she was grasping onto Pietro’s hand so hard that her knuckles were white. He didn’t seem to notice though. His nose was buried in her hair and his free arm couldn’t seem to stop touching her, stroking her shoulder or running through her hair. 

“Mergem la casa sigură,” he whispered in Romanian, urging her to follow Wanda as she took a few deliberate strides through the forest. They’d staged a truck, just outside of the HYDRA compound by the main road. If they made it that far before HYDRA sent the proverbial hounds after them, they’d be safe. At least for the time being. No one was in any shape to fight right now and Wanda could only do so much to protect the group.

“Vreau să merg acasă, dragoste,” Iskra replied, equally as breathily. Pietro just shook his head and she understood that it meant their old home was gone. 

“I hate to be a bother, but uh… I don’t speak Romanian,” Kurt interjected, lugging his heavy body through the forest after them, his tail dragging the ground. “And don’t I get a ‘Oh thanks for saving my girlfriend, Nightcrawler?’ or something? Maybe a proper introduction?”

“We were simply discussing that our home is gone,” Pietro scoffed. “And we are not out of the woods yet. Literally. But thank you, Wagner.”

Wanda shushed the boys, worried that HYDRA may have ears in the forest. The whole operation had gone more quietly than she’d anticipated, which unsettled her. They were close to the truck now, a beaten down red pick up, and if they could just make it that far… maybe they would get some peace. 

At least for awhile. 

Pietro didn’t offer Iskra help getting into the back of the cab. He just picked her up and crawled inside with her in his arms. Her head lolled sleepily to the side, but her empty eyes were still open. They looked at him, then to Wanda. She shuddered and climbed into the driver’s seat then waited for Kurt. 

“There is a place we can lie low for a little while. Just until we know they aren’t on our trail anymore,” Wanda explained, starting the engine and pulling out onto the road. 

But Iskra wasn’t listening. She was entranced, staring at Pietro. Her fingers traced his jaw, still not quite believing that they’d really come for her. “How long?” she asked softly so that only he could hear. “How long before you even started looking?”

“Seventeen seconds,” he replied, hurt in his voice. “I ran after the helicopter. I followed them to the compound and I ran circles around it. I tried to tear the doors down. Iskra… how could you even ask that? I…”

His words trailed off and he looked at his hands, the blisters covering them from where he pounded them raw on the steel doors. His shoulder were still bruised and sore. His feet ached from the constant movement. But all of it paled in comparison to her implying that he hadn’t tried. 

Her finger touched his lips softly. “Do you know what they did to me? They shot me full of drugs so I wouldn’t fight back. I couldn’t tell the difference between the horrors in my head and the horrors of what was real. They changed something in me, ‘Tro. I don’t know what, but I don’t feel the same. It’s like they took something out and filled it with more electricity.

And all that power, buzzing around in my brain, it told me you weren’t going to come. So forgive me for not rolling out the welcome wagon, but I’d all but given up hope. They moved me into a new cell today. One where for once, I wasn’t strapped down. I don’t think they expected me to try to escape anymore. Maybe I wouldn’t have. They said you weren’t coming enough times and I started to believe it.

So when this blue monkey shows up with you in tow, I was skeptical. But if this isn’t real, if it’s just another elaborate delusion, please fucking kill me. I couldn’t take waking up again.”

Pietro was silent for a long time, thinking of the right words to say that would take her pain away and convince her that all of this was real. But he’d seen what HYDRA could do to a person first hand, and her attitude towards it all was completely justified. So he turned to look out the window for a moment, watching the trees pass by in the dark and listening to the shallow breaths of Kurt and Wanda in the front seats.

These two people had risked their lives to bring back the only thing that really mattered in his. It was something he knew his twin would do for him in a heartbeat, but this stranger… a man with no loyalties to the Maximoffs… They wouldn’t have been able to do it without him. 

“Iskra,” Pietro hung his head to kiss her forehead where it rested on his shoulder. “I don’t know how to make you see it, but this is real. You were gone for thirteen days, and I never stopped trying to get to you. I guess that doesn’t matter. I should have found a way to get there sooner. But I can promise that they will never take you from me again. I will die protecting you. I swear it.”

“Okay,” Iskra smiled, the motion hurting a bit as it pulled at her dry and cracking skin. But deep in her heart, she did believe him. And that was enough to summon the energy to at least try to be herself. She didn’t feel at all like the woman she used to be, but maybe if she faked it for a little while, the real her would come back. “So you hired this… Kurt, to save me? What even are you?”

She leaned forward, between the two front seats as she spoke, eyeing the blue creature where he sat with his legs pulled up. He really did have human features, despite his impossibly yellow eyes and strange hands. He smiled softly, brushing his hair from his face. It fell to just above his shoulders and was darker than the night sky above them. 

“I’m a person,” he replied, matter of factly. But his tone lacked any sort of malice. “And I volunteered to help.”

“HYDRA made you like this?” Iskra asked, reaching out to poke his cerulean arm. It felt just like normal skin, if not a little fuzzier than most. Like a peach.

“Nein. I vas born blue,” he laughed. “I got it from my mutter. She was not a good person. But shit, she made me, and I’m handsome as hell. So she musta done something right. Vanda and Pietro said you can teleport… like me?”

Iskra just shrugged, but his sense of humor was helping to lift her mood a little. “That’s what my file said, but I’ve never done it. Maybe you can show me how?”

“Vell sure! It’s easy, really. Except that fraction of a second you spend vhen you’re gone, you’re someplace else. And you have to know vhere you are going or else you could teleport into a wall or something,” he began, eager to share his experiences with someone else. But Pietro cut him off.

“Not now, Wagner. Iskra is probably tired after what she’s been through,” he snapped, tugging on her shirt to pull her back into her seat and slipping an arm possessively around her shoulders. “There will be plenty time for that later. Before you go.”

“Don’t be so eager to send our guest packing, brother,” Wanda eyed her twin in the rearview, shooting him a warning glance. “If not for Kurt, you’re prințesă there would still be locked up in the tower.”

Pietro grumbled, very nearly pulling Iskra into his lap. But she moved willingly, happy to cuddle him and run her hands through his silver hair. As the truck slowed to a stop, he unbuckled Iskra’s seat belt, then his own. Offering her a hand, he watched her look around and her lips part in confusion. 

“Where are we?” she asked, frowning. They couldn’t have been in the truck for longer than an hour. “All I see is a dilapidated little farmhouse. How is that safe?”

“It’s not the farmhouse,” Wanda grabbed several bags from the bed of the truck and slung them over her shoulder. “It’s what’s under it. Houses from this era frequently had bomb shelters. Nice ones at that. That’s where we’ll be staying for the next several days. Once HYDRA calls off the search, we’ll go back to the new apartment and regroup.”

Iskra wrinkled her nose at the idea then shrugged. She shouldn’t be picky. The shelter was probably still nicer than the hotel in Pripyat. So she kept her opinions to herself and thankful to be away from her prison cell, followed the twins and their new companion underground.

***

Lying on her side on the cot, Wanda could see the entire room. The stacks of canned food and electronic radio equipment as well as her three charges. She felt a strong sense of responsibility to keep them safe. In their own ways, none of them were quite suited to do it themselves. 

And really, it felt right. A small part of her had always longed to be motherly, and now she had a reason. After the way Pietro had dissolved when he’d lost Iskra, he badly needed someone to be strong for him. 

Even now, he clung to her while she slept. Wanda watched Iskra’s chest rise and fall as Pietro curled around her tiny body. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or so since they’d taken root in the bunker and his tired eyes regarded his sister from over Iskra’s sleeping form. 

“I’m thinking we could leave soon,” Wanda said, twirling her hair between her fingers. 

“I’ve not seen any HYDRA soldiers outside,” Kurt replied and shifted his body weight in his chair. He’d been teleporting to the surface every couple of hours to have a look around and strangely, no one seemed to be on their trail. He really had expected HYDRA to search for what had been stolen from them. 

“Shhh,” Pietro tightened his arms around Iskra. “You’ll wake her…”

“She’s been sleeping for sixteen hours a day, ‘Tro. Something’s wrong with her,” Wanda sat up and smoothed her skirt. “She needs to see the sunlight.”

Her brother didn’t speak. He just stared at her, unwilling to believe that locking Iskra up someplace else wasn’t going to help her move past what she’d just been through. 

“I’m fine,” Iskra coughed, her voice a tiny rasp whisper. “But Wanda is right. I need to go outside. I need to know the world is still out there. I’m sick of eating old green beans from the tin and playing cards.”

She lifted Pietro’s arm and slinked out from beneath it, sitting on the edge of the roll away bed. He moved behind her, wanting so badly to continue holding her but ultimately resigning to letting her move on her own. 

“Why are we hiding anyway?” She asked, rolling her shoulders and wincing slightly when they popped. “If they made us into weapons, we should use that against them, shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea when you’re still out of touch with the extent of your abilities,” Pietro countered. He watched her cross the room and take a cigarette from the pack on the table. She lit it and leaned against the wall. 

“And I’m going to stay out of touch with them if I never have a chance to learn. Look, I appreciate that you’ve saved me, on several occasions now. But I can’t sit around and wait to die. We’re all better than that. We should fight back, like we planned to!” Iskra ashed her cigarette in an empty mug. “And I bet there are others like us out there that want to make HYDRA pay for what they’ve done too. You found Kurt, after all.”

Wanda smiled. Maybe there wasn’t anything at all wrong with Iskra. Maybe all it took to shake the cobwebs loose from her brain was to rile her up a little. 

“So let me go outside. Let me feel the grass under my feet and the rain on my skin. Let me be alive instead of just slowly dying here, wasting away,” Iskra turned to Pietro, meeting his icy glare. “Lasă-mă să trăiesc.”

“You don’t need our permission, Iskra.” Wanda piped up before Pietro had a chance to. “Our intention was never to force you into captivity. Only to give you love and show you how to stand up for yourself. Right, Pietro?”

“Da…” he agreed, reluctantly. “True, we love you. You are the light of my life, dragӑ mea. Do what you feel is right, and I will support you.”

Iskra nodded, smiling. After three days underground, she was finally beginning to feel free again. Like she had in Bucharest. Even if there were no shops or streets deep in the forest on a secluded farm. She pushed herself away from the wall and approached Kurt, offering her hand. 

“Take me outside. And show me how to teleport. Please?” She asked. From the corner of her eye, she watched Pietro’s shoulders stiffen but he remained silent. Kurt’s yellow eyes darted around the room and when no one yelled for him not to, he took her hand in his three fingered one. 

“As you vish,” a wicked grin spread across his blue lips, excited to do something other than watch the twins play cards and whisper in Romanian while Iskra slept. 

***

When the smoke cleared, they were standing in what was once a pasture. The grass was overgrown, soft against their bare feet. Kurt watched Iskra fall to her knees, tears of joy brimming in her eyes. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling to place a hand on her shoulder. But the giggle that bubbled up through her, shaking her body, gave him pause. She was perfectly fine. She was just happy.

“You can’t possibly understand,” she sighed, grinning and falling backwards into the greenery. Kurt sat down beside her, folding his legs and draping his tail over his lap.

“Maybe not,” he shrugged. “But you can try to explain it to me.”

Iskra turned to look at him, her face pressed against the warm earth. The breeze blew his dark hair into his face and he twitched his nose, making a ridiculous face before pawing it away. Her grin softened, becoming a genuine smile. 

It was a change of pace for someone to be so willing to hear her. Sure, Pietro and Wanda listened, but she sometimes doubted that they truly heard her. And in Pietro’s case at least, she didn’t blame him at all. He’d explained on numerous occasions that the world’s normal pace was a snail’s to him. While Iskra fumbled and fought for the right words to say in any situation, eternities passed for Pietro.

Perception was everything.

“So are you going to tell me?” Kurt urged, laughing as Iskra stared off into the blue sky, deep in thought. 

“Right, yeah. I guess it’s just that I spent so much time alone in Pripyat that being outside became pretty important to me. I didn’t hear anyone’s voice but my own for so long that the song birds and the wild dogs became my friends. They spoke to me,” she tried to explain. “So being inside for so long… In Bucharest and then with HYDRA and now here…”

“You missed the voices of nature,” he finished for her. “Right?”

“Yes. That’s a pretty good way of putting it,” Iskra sat up, breathing deep and reveling in the clean air. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Kurt asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Saving me, I guess.” Iskra reasoned. But that wasn’t it. Not really. 

“Don’t be silly. Pietro and Wanda, they saved you. I was simply the tool by vhich they could do so,” he said, getting to his feet once again. “But I think, as nice as this veather is, I should teach you how to teleport before your boyfriend tears my blue head off.”

“Yeah alright,” Iskra stood as well. “So what’s the trick?”

Kurt took several steps back and pressed his hands together dramatically. In a blink, he was standing behind her. Then again, he was by the tree line, then back again. 

“There is no trick. If you concentrate, you can see the lines that connect everything in the vorld together. Like strings, thin as spider silk. Then tug on one, and it pulls you through to the other side,” he explained, moving his hands like spider legs and laughing. “Really, it’s easy Iskra. You’ve probably done it before and you didn’t even know it.”

***

Wanda watched her brother shuffle and reshuffle the deck of cards in his hands. They moved faster than she could process but after a moments, they'd pause for a millisecond, resting in his palms. 

His cheeks were flushed with red and his lips pulled down in a scowl. She knew better than to try to talk to him when he was like this. If he wanted to express his feelings, he would. He almost always did eventually, after all. The cards slipped from his grasp, spilling out over the cement floor and Pietro huffed angrily.

"Do I look like a fool, Wanda?" He demanded, hands on his knees. He didn't look up at her as he spoke. 

"No one thinks that," she replied softly, wanting to comfort him but knowing that keeping her distance was likely best. 

"She's out there with him doing who knows what while we sit down here, cast aside. We busted her out of that hell. We risked our lives to keep her safe. And she doesn't care?" Pietro ran his hands through his silver hair and bent over to pick the cards up. "She doesn't need me now. That's it, right? Now that's she's found another mutant with the same powers. Why would she keep me around?"

Wanda sighed. "Because she loves you, Pietro."

"Does she? Or did she just cling to the first person who showed her freedom? I wonder if she knows what love is after... Everything." His eyes met his sister's then fell once again, to the floor. 

He felt powerless, which was not a common emotion for Pietro. He was accustomed to being in control of every situation and waiting to see what Iskra would do was trying his patience. 

"Maybe she does and maybe she doesn't, but you can't change that. You've invested time in this and you've told her that you trust her, so act like it," Wanda's voice was soft but stern. "Beating yourself up over maybes will get you nowhere, brother. It's not my place, but what she chooses to do with the freedom you've given her is her decision. 

I know you noticed that something was gone from her when we got her back from Hydra. The light in her eyes had gone dark and that's a dangerous thing to lose. The prospect of going outside and learning something new brought just a glimmer of that light back. You should embrace that. There is no sense in taking her from one cage and putting her in another then calling it being free. If you love her like you say you do, swallow this jealousy." 

Pietro sank against the metal frame of the cot behind him. His sister was right but he felt like a scolded child. So he huffed and crossed his arms and didn't say anything. He just stared at the cards in his hands and resumed shuffling them. 

He couldn't help the way he felt, but like Wanda said, he could try to swallow it and hope to hell that doing so didn't result in an explosion when the effort became too great.

And it certainly didn't mean that the sick feeling in his stomach would go away. Iskra was experiencing new things and it pissed him off beyond all else that he couldn't be the one to give her those gifts. Or at the very least watch the way her eyes lit up and a tiny smile played at the corner of her lips as she realized the extent of her own potential. 

“I think you’re right, we should go home soon… Staying down here isn’t doing a single one of us any good,” Pietro said finally. “Since HYDRA isn’t even looking.”

“But don’t you find that strange?” Wanda raised an eyebrow. “We broke into their compound and didn’t hear a single siren on the way out. That’s not right. And it’s unsettling that Iskra remembers so little of her time there. The new apartment might not be safe but still, I think we should start talking about leaving.”

“If we aren’t going back to the apartment, where are we going?” Pietro asked. 

Wanda opened her mouth to speak but before she had the opportunity to, Iskra appeared in the center of the room. Wispy smoke circled her, dissipating slowly and giving her an ethereal aura. If not for the wide smile plastered on her lips, she’d have looked demonic. 

Kurt appeared several seconds behind her, clapping his hands and laughing. “She’s a natural!” he exclaimed. 

“Are you proud of me, ‘Tro?” Iskra asked, taking a step towards him. Her legs wavered uneasily beneath her, but she caught herself and laughed breathily. 

Pietro left from where he sat on the cot to wrap an arm around her shoulder and guide her to sit down. “Of course, dragӑ mea.” He shot Kurt a sidelong glance full of unspoken accusations. 

Had he allowed her to overdo it and hurt herself? 

“You have good timing, we were just about to discuss where we all go from here,” Wanda straightened her back but didn’t move from where she was seated. 

Iskra tugged on Pietro’s jacket sleeve, urging him to lean against her. She rubbed the fabric between her fingertips and he bent his head to kiss her temple softly. “I missed you,” he whispered and she smiled, snuggling closer to him to rest her cheek against his shoulder. 

“I thought you said we were going to go back to the new apartment you guys found while I was… away,” Iskra looked up at Wanda, through the haze of purple hair that fell forward over her eyes. “What’s changed?”

“I need you all to hear me out on this,” Wanda began, folding her hands in her lap as she spoke and looking between the three people in the room. “I know it seems like HYDRA isn’t looking for you right now, or that’s how it seems, but we can’t discount them. They’re a massive organization and I have a hard time believing that they keep losing our trail so easily. Something happened down there… something happened to you, Iskra. Maybe they marked you somehow… but they’ve got to know… We aren’t any safer in this bunker than we would be in the apartment or the whole of Eastern Europe. If we really want them off our asses, you and Pietro need to go to America. Without me.”

Iskra’s heart sank. “What? We’re stronger as one! We’re supposed to stay together...”

“The two of you need each other, that much is obvious. Pietro can keep you safe while I gather more information. But if they catch me snooping around, they need to not be able to trace me back to you.” Wanda explained. Her gaze met Pietro’s and his stoicism surprised her. “We will still stay in contact, and if Kurt wants to stay with me to help me out, he can.”

“But why America?” Iskra asked as she moved even closer to Pietro. The warmth of his body heat soothed her. She missed their life in Bucharest, when things were simpler. 

“There are people there that hate HYDRA too. And it’s a big place. It’s easy to blend into the crowd there. But I can’t make you do anything. The decision is yours. Both of yours,” Wanda concluded, watching her brother pull Iskra into his arms and stroke her back. 

“I couldn’t ask you to leave your sister,” Iskra began, reaching up to touch Pietro’s rough cheek. 

He shook his head. 

“I think she’s right. I think we should go,” He said, loud enough for the room to hear, then let his voice drop. “I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make up for all of this and give you the life that you deserve. And when it’s time, I’ll help you kill every last one of the fuckers that hurt you.”

“I vill help you,” Kurt added simply, giving Wanda a three fingered thumbs up. She smiled in return, glad for the company. 

“Thank you… and the two of you, you’re going to need fake identification if you’re going to get through customs in America. That much will be simple. But once you’re there, you’ll have to be very careful not to draw attention to yourselves,” Wanda turned to the computer on the table beside her and began tapping away at the keys. “I can have someone meet you at the airport with passports.”

“Since when did you become an international smuggler, sis?” Pietro asked, a hint of his smirk returning to his lips. “So where will we go?”

“New York? If you can, get in touch with a man named Stark. He’s powerful and can help you. But until then, blend into the wallpaper. I’ll find you an apartment and contact you when you land,” Wanda didn’t look up from the computer screen but she smiled. “And never doubt my ability to get shit done, bro.”

“We’re going now?” Iskra’s eyes flitted between the faces in the room, panic swelling in her gut. 

“May as well go now. It’s as good a time as any,” Wanda told her. “Don’t be scared. Pietro will be right there with you for everything. He has his cell phone and we will get you a new one. Unfortunately yours was lost in Bucharest. You can run to just outside the city, but take a taxi to the airport to avoid suspicion and to give our connect enough time to get there with your documents. I’ll have them bring you a change of clothes as well.”

Iskra sat up, allowing Pietro to slide off the cot and go hug his sister. “You come meet us as soon as you can, okay?” he told her, she nodded and blinked away the tears forming in her eyes. 

“Keep practicing teleporting,” Kurt said, offering Iskra his hand then pulling her into a tight hug once she took it. “Ve vill meet again soon. I’m happy to have met you.”

“It was nice meeting you too,” Iskra ruffled his dark hair with her hands and kissed his cheek softly. “Thank you for everything, but most of all, thanks for being my friend.”

“Stop, you vill make me cry,” Kurt laughed, but he did have to look away from her. “I vas never good at saying goodbye.”

“You’re not,” Pietro interjected, approaching Iskra from behind and picking her up. “Just saying ‘See you later’ yeah?”

“Then see you later, Wanda. And thank you,” Iskra called from over her shoulder before Pietro carried her away up the steps and they disappeared into a blur of movement.

***

With her face pressed against the rear window of the cab, Iskra didn’t notice Pietro shifting uncomfortably in his seat until they stopped at a red light.

“I’ve never been on a plane before, at least I don’t think I have. Is it fun? Is it scary? Do they have food? How long will the flight be?” She ranted. When Pietro didn’t immediately respond to her excitement, she turned to look at him.

His face had lost quite a bit of its color and he was holding onto the handle above the door as though his life depended on it. “You’ll be fine on the plane,” he said simply and tried to keep looking forward.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked, reaching over the center seat to touch his muscular forearm. He repositioned it so that he could hold her hand, but he didn’t look at her.

“Carsick,” he replied, swallowing hard to keep from vomiting. 

“You get carsick? Seriously? But you can run at least three times faster than this car!” Iskra bit back a laugh. 

“Shut up,” Pietro whimpered. “I’m in control when I run.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Iskra gave his hand a squeeze. “It looks like we’re almost there. There are signs for the airport.”

“Good,” he sighed, resting his head against the seat and clung to her hand for dear life. 

When they arrived, an average looking man in an average looking leather jacket opened the cab door for them. Pietro nearly spilled out, swooning on his feet a bit. Iskra followed, making sure to keep a hand in the small of his back to keep him upright. 

“Mr. Maximoff?” The man asked, extending his hand. Pietro shook it. “Here are your documents and your bags. Enjoy your flight.”

He handed the pair their items then turned and walked away. Quick and to the point, but when Iskra thought about it, it made sense that he wouldn’t stick around and draw any attention to them. 

She opened her passport. Inside was definitely a picture of her, from when she had longer hair, but the name read Ophelia, not Iskra. And her last name was listed as Maximoff as well.

“I think there was a mistake,” she tugged on Pietro’s arm and showed him the paper. “Also I don’t remember getting married.”

“No, look at mine,” he flipped the little book open, revealing his own picture and the name Pyotr Maximoff. Both books had several stamps from various countries their aliases had visited. Many of them matched. “I guess our honeymoon was in Peru.”

“Do you think it was nice?” She asked, hiking the small backpack the man had given her onto her shoulder as they walked into the airport. 

“Are you really asking me if our counterfeit honeymoon was nice?” Pietro laughed, hooking his arm under hers to keep her close as they approached the security checkpoint. 

“Well, yeah,” Iskra shrugged. “If they ask us about it, we should have a story.”

She set her bag on the conveyor belt and removed her shoes like the signs indicated. Once through the metal detector, they headed down the hall together towards their gate. 

“We have the entire flight to come up with a story. But no one’s going to ask,” Pietro finally replied, far enough away from security personnel to safely continue their conversation. 

“My dress was off white and sleeveless. And covered in hundred of pretty little flowers,” she grinned, leading Pietro by the hand to a series of chair by a large window. The sign above said that boarding had not yet begun yet. “Wanda was there too and her dress was red, of coure. She looked gorgeous with her hair all done up and curly. And you in your suit, god you looked handsome.”

“Did I?” Pietro laughed, draping an arm over her shoulders and kissing her softly on the lips before allowing her to keep talking. “I was so nervous though. I got too drunk at my bachelor party and almost overslept the morning of the wedding.”

“You better not have had strippers, ‘Tro. I’ll kick your ass,” Iskra frowned and pinched the skin on his arm playfully.

“Gonna give me shit over fictional strippers?” he pinched her back, eliciting a high pitched squeal that turned a few heads as people passed by. From an outside perspective, they did looks like a couple very much in love. Maybe returning from that honeymoon in Peru or flying to visit family in the states. Their smiles were genuine, which helped paint the picture. “You look so happy talking about this, dragӑ. It doesn’t have to be a forgery, you know.”

“Did you just propose to me?!” Iskra’s eyes widened and she leaned back in surprise

“Nu! I don’t have a ring or anything so no but… Well… maybe, Da.” His cheeks turned a bright red so he looked away, brushing his silver locks from his face. “Look, it’s time to board the plane.”

He stood, pulling her to her feet as well. She pulled back, keeping him from walking away just yet. Standing on her toes, she kissed him quickly but deeply, knotting her fingers in his hair and feeling him moan ever so softly against her lips. 

“Well if you were, not that you are, but if you were, my answer would be yes,” Iskra whispered when she freed him from her grasp. His eyes were glassy with desire. He leaned toward her, begging for more as his hands caressed her hips with complete disregard to their surroundings. “But no strippers at your bachelor party.”

“Anything for you, frumoasa mea dragă,” he replied sweetly, hand grabbing her ass as they walked towards the gate.


End file.
